


Threads of Destiny

by CatalenaMara



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Memories of mass slaughter and genocide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 22:19:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14482395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatalenaMara/pseuds/CatalenaMara
Summary: Odin stands on a cliffside in Norway overwhelmed by memories, of Frigga, of Loki, of Thor, and of Hela and how he went so badly wrong.





	Threads of Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> The three Norns: Urðr -“What Once Was”, Verðandi - “What Is Coming into Being”, and Skuld - “What Shall Be”.  
> Odin's ravens: Huginn is "Thought" and Muninn is "Memory".
> 
> Many, many thanks to my betas [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Tenaya/profile)[**Tenaya**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Tenaya/) and [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Muriel_Perun/profile)[](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Muriel_Perun/)**Muriel_Perun**.

The shadows of his ravens shivered through the tall grasses, wheeling in vast circles around him, arcing over the grey waves of the Midgardian sea beyond the cliff before him. The old man, once Prince, once King, now nothing but memory and breath, stood in calm silence, waiting. 

His sons would soon arrive. 

A gust of wind passed over Odin, certain as Urðr’s voice behind him. The grass rippled beneath its force on its path to the cliff’s edge. The Norn’s voice, clear in his ear, spoke of blood and passion and nightmare, ambition and strength, and overweening pride. 

And love. Never forget. Love. The softness of Frigga’s hand when he took it in his own the day they wed; the brightness of her flower crown a glorious contrast against the fire of her hair. Her eyes, her smile, and all the promises they held within. The wonder on her face as she took one son, then another, into her arms for the first time.

The lights accompanying her spirit as it ascended to the stars; the flames and the boat as they fell off the edge of the world into infinity.

The grief and sorrow that had returned him to the path of madness.

A thousand times a thousand days and yet more beyond counting, and Urðr remembered them all. And because of her, so did he.

The ravens cawed and wheeled again, Muninn calling strong and clear, bringing memories to the fore. 

Blood, endless torrents of blood. The art of war. Odin Borson, absorbing his father’s teachings for all those centuries. Genocide. The slaughter of the Svartálfr. Evil, Father had called them, and spoke with pride how he and his warriors had slain every last one of them.

How many times had he imparted these lessons to his own sons, despite swearing to himself when Thor was born that he would do better?

How he had loved those tales, oh yes, his eager glory in his father’s victories inspiring him to go raging through the Realms with sword and ax of his own, his daughter at his side, waging battle after battle until the countless bodies strewn across endless blackened landscapes were piled higher than an Aesir’s height. All in his father’s name, while beneath his desire for glory was his yearning for his father’s admiration, his jealousy of his father’s deeds, his ambition to outdo him. And still the enemies kept coming. Still the slaughter continued and he reveled in it, bathing in blood, lusting for more victories for Asgard’s glory. 

And how the gold had poured in, tributes collected by fear. 

Later, he called those mountains of gold gifts of respect and fancied himself a Protector of all. Later, he used the gold to create beauty as a mask for the terrors of the past, hiding away the truth beneath false coverings. 

But then, he and his daughter, Mjolnir in Hela’s hands, had slain more in the Realms than yet lived this day, for everywhere they went the peoples clung to their freedom, their right to rule themselves, until they learned their lessons as they died, crushed beneath his and Hela’s boots.

How many had he slain, before he had had enough? How much blood dripped from his own hands? How much pride had he taken in his daughter’s feats, until she surpassed him, and even he finally cried, “Enough!” and cast the spell that bound her?

When Bor, High King and father, who he had thought beyond compare, beyond error, had fallen to death, their final revenge was savage beyond measure. Then came the day with no dawn, so darkened were the skies with the smoke from the burning bodies of their enemies that light dared not intrude. Covered with blood and gore from helm to boots, he came across his daughter. She was roaring in triumph, her thirst for blood finally eclipsing even his own. She’d stood surrounded by the corpses of their enemy’s infants, the last to die of all of their race. She had grinned at him with bloodstained teeth and shouted her triumph. 

Those tiny bodies, barely recognizable as babies, had sickened him. He’d found himself staring at the madness in Hela’s eyes, and felt an awful twist in his own soul: a terror that he, too, might yet sink so low.

In denial, rejection, he had turned away from her, her boasts echoing in his ears. In revulsion, he’d summoned the Valkyrir and sent them into their final doomed battle, counting their sacrifice well worth it for the time it granted him. While Hela rained death on the Valkyrir and they fell in dozens from the sky, he used Gungnir to do the great working which imprisoned Hela forever in the cage of a dark and empty realm entirely her own. 

And, after that, he resolved to be a better king. He swore it.

He had gilded the construct Bor had built and he had inherited: Asgard, an artificial planetoid, the Golden Realm, every bit of it stained in blood, every bit of the blood covered over by gold. He had proclaimed peace while maintaining order by force. He buried their past by plastering over images and memories alike, creating new paintings to hide the old, sending out spells so that none among those who dwelled in the Nine remembered the name of Hela. He’d gone even further and buried the memory of Hela’s mother, who had died in the process of giving birth to Death itself. He took the gold they’d won and aggrandized his palace: their highest achievement, the best of all magicks concentrated into one place, and the power of that place concentrated in him, now become Odin All-Father.

He then built another elaborate construct: He, a wise ruler. He, a just king. 

He, a liar, thinking that concealment of the past could replace the parts of his mind and heart and soul that he would not admit were gone forever.

How quickly the memories of his daughter had been plastered over like the hidden painting above the throne, concealed by new images of who he had wanted to become, his daughter thought of only in the darkest hours when her voice broke through his wards and screamed in the depths of his nightmares. 

When all was done, he’d taken a new wife, Frigga of Vanaheim, and after due time had been presented with a golden son. He’d placed in Thor all his hopes for a better, brighter future, free of the taint of his deeds. And then he had taken an infant from a frozen temple. He had placed the child in Frigga’s arms. He had given her a second son, his choice, his changeling, his usurper, his redemption. Loki.

He, a careful father, instilling in his sons the ways of just war and just peace. _A wise king never seeks out war, but he must always be ready for it_ , he taught them, and he had believed this, believed himself redeemed from his past. He’d cleansed the taint of Hela’s touch from Mjolnir with complex spells to enforce its acceptance of only one worthy to wield it, readying it for Thor’s future use. He had ignored Hela’s voice whispering to him from her cage. Kept ignoring it, built wards against it, refused to hear it, even as her voice grew louder and louder until it broke through his protective shields, until she was screaming in his ears, her fierce uncompromising lust for blood overwhelming him again with Malekith’s return.

Bor’s incomplete genocide of the Svartálfr had led to this: his own madness. His father’s mistakes, first to fight the war and then to believe that it had truly ended. His beloved wife’s murder. His own downfall - his willingness to listen to Hela’s words of slaughter, to embrace his past, to lust for war and to be willing to sacrifice all of Asgard in service of revenge. His rage at Thor’s hard-won wisdom, his deafness to Thor’s advice on how to avoid the battle, his dismissal of Thor’s plan to take Jane to Svartalfheim to save them all. He hadn’t admitted then what he did now: His son had grown beyond him.

Forever was just a word. Nothing survived past its time. He, like his father, was mortal in the end. They all were. As water and air would eventually pound the highest mountain to sand and dust, so too did Hela’s chains decay. With the death of his flesh, the tides of Asgard’s energy would flow and follow their appointed course. The bonds would crack, the prison break open. At the instant of his last breath his daughter would be free, Asgard’s magic and power now hers.

He had dreamed, in that place Loki had left him, just one more aged mortal in a building full of aged mortals, their failing bodies, their failing minds mirroring his own. But dreams became memory, and quiet became reflection.

In the noise and silence of the place Loki had left him, he had dreamed and woken and dreamed again. Examining the mirror of Loki’s unquiet mind against the chaos of his own thoughts, he began to find peace even as he began the unraveling of the spell. He became calm, focused, picking apart its warp and weft, aware of how lost Frigga’s hands had guided young Loki’s magic, and then, now, his memory of her spirit guided his own.

As he loosened the final threads, he understood finally: it was time for both him and Loki to let go of the anger and pain between them. And he must be the first to let go. 

His adopted son, on the throne, in his guise. 

He’d seen it, almost as soon as the Einherjar had approached his throne, delivered his message. Thor and the Aether missing. A body. Loki. 

He’d seen it in the Eiherjar’s eyes, then, that ferocious intelligence, that rage, that determination, and even as he reached for Gungnir, Loki’s power had wrapped itself tightly around him before he could speak one Word of defense.

He’d found himself lying on the throne room floor, unable to speak, Loki kneeling beside him, showing his teeth in a smile of triumph. He’d been filled with helpless rage, struggling impotently against the bonds that held him as Loki’s whispered words threaded into his mind and began weaving a cocoon of silence and loss of identity even as Loki transformed his appearance into Odin’s own visage and body. He’d understood then everything he was losing and grabbed onto one last unspoken spell: that of sleep so deep that when he awakened again a small kernel of his mind would remain, something to rebuild from.

And in that Midgardian home, he had found Loki’s spell had given him a priceless if unintended gift: a haven from his nightmares, a barrier against Hela’s screams and threats. Loki unknowingly had given him a time of calm to let his mind heal and his soul find an unexpected peace. Freed from the burden of rule, and dwelling with many mortals whose minds had slipped away from them, made him realize how much he had lost of his own mind, his own sanity.

The cleverness of the boy, the power, the rage and evil deeds Loki had been driven to. Odin’s own fierce anger, seeing in the boy all of the failings he had refused to acknowledge in himself. He’d burdened his changeling son with chains instead of asking for explanations; he’d condemned him without attempting understanding, too consumed by the harsh anger he kept meting out on his sons, seeing in them the fatal flaws his daughter embodied, not waiting for any reasons, his store of forgiveness and understanding run dry.

Now he saw too clearly how he had erred. In the white noise of the nursing home he had thought: Loki, yes, it is right you took the throne. You were born to be king, after all. I was not worthy. Nor my own father, nor Buri before him. You are not worthy either, but your mind winds in different paths, and perhaps you will find other ways to rule than we did. 

In that strange peace he’d found in the mortal dwelling, with the future and the present and the past one and the same, he’d considered the greatest magic of all: Destiny, at once as solid and as vulnerable as stone when impacted with precise aim and force in one single moment in time. 

Urðr showed him himself:

Knee deep in jötnar blood he’d found a scarlet-eyed babe. He felts its magic, saw its innocent trust. He’d remembered Hela’s last battlefield, the dismembered corpses of the children of their last enemy strewn about her.

He’d remembered his revulsion, that feeling of teetering on a cliff’s edge and stepping back to safety.

He’d looked down into the face of an enemy whelp and saw a child instead.

He’d stayed his hand.

His memories of Hela had leaked through even as the child had taken his new appearance, though he would not see until later the clear echo of his daughter’s form in his new son’s aspect. But when the babe began to grow he recognized Loki’s black hair and pale skin to be one and the same as his daughter’s. Realizing that his memories had influenced the babe’s appearance, he thought: _this time I will do better. You look like her. You will not be her._

As a child Loki had followed him whenever permitted, looking up at him with eyes filled with such worship. He’d taken that love as his due from a core belief that Loki, despite his ignorance of his origins, owed him additional fealty. Thor had been a more difficult child: headstrong, feasting on tales of battle and ignoring the lessons of peace. Loki, he’d taken for granted, confident that he was raising them both to be better than he had been.

Loki had thrived under Frigga’s attention, his intelligence and cleverness more apparent every day; his skill in seiðr unprecedented for one so young. Odin had accepted the worship in those green eyes and forgot to look well before it faded away, too obsessed with his plans to finally have all the Nine at peace, with Loki taking his rightful place as King of Jotunheim. He’d already had plans for the disposal of Laufey.

When had he lost Loki? Had he allowed Loki’s resemblance to Hela – the resemblance he himself was responsible for - to taint his own love, to cause him to withhold it from the boy even as he had showered Thor with approval and affection? 

_It all makes sense now why you favored Thor all these years_

Yes. Yes, he had. Yet one more crushing failure he must now acknowledge.

He’d thought he was doing everything right, that he was molding and shaping his sons into what he desired them to be: stronger and more honorable than he.

He’d forgotten they were becoming their own men, and because of that everything fell apart. The shock of the revelation that all Thor had ever taken from his teaching was the thirst to kill all his enemies. Seeing all of his mistakes writ large in Thor’s arrogant face, hearing his son’s roared insults, had ignited such a firestorm of rage in him that hurling Thor and that blood-drenched weapon to Midgard had felt, for a mere second, as if his own past were about to rise up and overwhelm him. 

Then Loki, maddened by the lies Odin had told him, had attempted to do Bor one better and destroy an entire realm in one decisive action. An action, Odin had been sickened to realize, that he applauded on some deep level for the sheer audacity of such a complete and total end to a war, and because of that sudden unwanted thought he’d made a fatal error.

How had he not seen he would destroy his adopted son with one ill-chosen word?

He had been certain he’d taught his sons well. He realized now he’d taught them nothing. He’d seen his own greed for gold, power, and control in his sons and punished them harshly, forgetting to look at them to see who they truly were.

He remembered Frigga’s hands, accepting the new babe into her life. Her hands, so many times over the years, picking apart the warp and weft of her thread, misliking the patterns, weaving anew. Change, and change again, but still the same lines of fate binding them together, tearing them apart. 

Could the threads of destiny been altered into a new pattern if he had not been so blind?

Verðandi whispered in his ear, _another War is coming._

He shuddered and hoped his people would be safe and well in his sons’ hands. Because when his daughter returned…

He would not live to see this war. He accepted that fact with peace. There was little left for him to do, and he was about to do it.

How much could he tell them? How much could he make them understand?

Hela was battering at the doors of her prison, and now that he had unwoven Loki’s spell he had awakened to the sound of her voice screaming in his ears.

Yet somehow that time of unexpected and unlooked for peace in that Midgardian residence for the elderly had helped him distance himself from Hela’s threats and blood-soaked promises. 

It was a terrible legacy indeed he left to his sons. But he was certain the two of them, together, would prevail.

The wind had died. The air had become very still. The ravens wheeled in silence.

Verðandi whispered in his ear, _they are almost here._

He could see them now, in the Midgardian sorcerer’s abode, moving toward their own fate. How he had bragged to Stephen Strange of his sons, proud of Loki’s skill and power, for what better proof of that than the prison Loki had created for him? 

Standing invisible before him, Skuld beckoned, though all his mortal eyes could see were the bend of the grasses, the grey white-capped sea beyond the edge of the cliff, the movement of the clouds across the sky.

Skuld, now waiting ahead of him, said clearly, _“He will be King,”_ and he saw the image of Thor. 

_Choose now_ , Skuld said. _You know the paths._

He saw it clearly. He knew it to be true. Thor would be king, no matter where that path led him. 

“Is it the right choice?” He was not speaking for himself, now. He could sense the presence of his sons so clearly it was as if they were already here.

 _That is not for you to know._ Skuld’s voice was gentle yet implacable.

“Death approaches,” he said, ready.

 _Yes. She is very close now._ He could almost see Skuld, the tracery of her image like transparent insect wings, visible only in certain lights. More visible than her sisters in these, the last moments of his life.

“There is only one choice,” Odin said. “Or rather, there is none.”

The shadows of the ravens passed over his head and then Huginn and Muninn streaked out to sea, merciless, without farewell. Their black forms disappeared into the distance.

He listened to the sound of the surf, breathed in the cool alien air. There was no need to be anywhere else. No death in glorious battle. No death in the comfort of his enchanted bed. Just this windswept land: the least of the realms; the last of his life.

”It is time,” Odin said, and Thor and Loki were with him.

In an instant that lasted an eternity he took them in. He regretted everything. He forgave them everything. He spoke not the words asking them to do the same for him. 

He took in the sight of their faces. Loki was too astonished at his words of acceptance, too filled with sentiment to put on a mask of disdain or hauteur or even anger. The anguish on his face told Odin all he needed to know: all had not been lost, even if nothing had been forgotten or forgiven. They were still father and son. 

And Thor: his golden son, now truly the man he needed to be, not the man Odin had wanted him to be. 

He told them what he could, his memories flowing from the present to the past too swiftly to capture all he needed to say, the fleeting seconds left to him robbing him of most of the words he had never told them, of the knowledge and warnings he had somehow forgotten needed to be spoken. 

He smiled at his sons, the weight of his deeds now almost unbearably light. It was time to go. To dissolve into light. To be with Frigga, who had died in valiant battle. To meet her in Val-Höll, if they would allow this old warrior, come late to an understanding of peace, within their gates.

He saw Frigga now, over the water, holding out her hand. He dissolved into light.


End file.
